Image via Dimmerswitch's Flickr
The first time I saw her, I didn’t know what to think. She was either the greatest or most unusual person I had seen on television for a long while. After pondering about it out loud to my husband, we agreed that she was great in an unusual way. And unusual great is my favourite sort of great.
I’m talking about the wonderful Lucy Worsley: my current favourite person on the telly. She is the Chief Curator of the Royal Historical Palaces, an author and TV presenter. You might have seen her presenting Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency or If Walls Could Talk on BBC4.
The reasons for this newfound admiration are as follows:
1. She knows her stuff: Lucy is clever. She studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford before gaining her PhD in Art History. She can talk and write about stuff like the history of domestic lighting in great depth and make it really interesting. She brings together historical sources and breathes new life into them, whilst making them fun and accessible. Leading onto my next point…
2. She looks like she’d be ruddy good fun to have a drink with: Whilst she is brainy it appears that Lucy isn’t above having a laugh. She’ll dress up as a Dandy, lounge in bed like a decadent flapper or don a bonnet and go all Pride and Prejudice. Yep, she’s not afraid of looking daft. She also has an knack for finding the juicy and amusing parts of history and making them relevant to life in 2011.
3. Her hair is super cute: This is the bob that I have longed to pull-off for years.
4. Her wardrobe is super cute: The lady owns contemporary bluestocking chic. I’m not talking about the trendy-wendy “eccentric geek chic” that is plastered all over Vogue lately. I mean proper “I love a good cardigan with a knee length skirt” style. It isn’t edgy, but her look works. Take a bright cardi, team it with a simple but shapely dress, add some quirky details (a bow here, some rouching there), opaque tights and some clumpy wedge shoes and there you have trademark Lucy style.
As a treat, here’s a video of Lucy talking about toilet paper.
BBxx